Thread by @cesifoti

I don’t know if this is the meaning of life, but to me, it is damn close.
As I meet more people in their sunset years, & I imagine myself there, I see that some have achieved a zen-like quality that I hope one day I'll have. Those are people who can be truly happy for others. 🧵

No veil. No bullshit. Bliss for those living outside your own skin. I don’t think everyone gets there, but I think many do.

You see, we are born lacking much of that ability. As children, we are self-centered. And that’s ok. As parents we even allow children to intoxicate in their own self-righteousness.

We know that it is futile to fight a child’s entitlement, so why not let the child indulge in their own feelings? We know what’s coming next.

As we grow our insignificance becomes palpable. Not because we are less important or influential, but because we begin to understand the size of the world.

Our life stops being ours. We become part of society. We begin to understand that we owe everything, absolutely everything to others, even though we have a minuscule ability to give back.

And life enters a competitive stage, a stage in which the pressure for survival pushes us to get what we can. To raise elbows. It can sometimes reignite those childhood feelings.

But the test cannot last forever. You need to figure it out before the sun goes down. And as the sun sets, life appears to ask you if you’ve learned to outgrow the jealousy inside you. If you managed to expel jealousy, self-importance, & entitlement from your body.

If you learned to tame the feelings you usually deny. But they are there. Comparisons are unavoidable and can become toxic. Unless we find the ability to feel truly happy for others. Not to voice that happiness, or proclaim it, but to actually feel it.

And I’ve seen that feeling in some old people’s eyes. They don’t need to open their mouths or make any gestures. It is there. It is a spark. A glow in those who learned the lesson.

Not everyone gets there. Some still chase wealth and glory near the sunset.

So is life just a long lesson? A test to see if you can become free of your own feelings of jealousy and entitlement?

I don’t know if this is the meaning of life, but to me, it seems pretty close.

[This post was written with a literary—not literal or scientific—purpose. Please do not engage with it as proposing a fact, hypothesis, or definition of the meaning of life. Think of it as a passage in a fiction book describing the stream of thought of a fictional character].

<I posted this text originally in Facebook in 2018. This is an slightly edited version>